Government

Voters in Heath Springs and Kershaw will head to the polls Tuesday to have their say on council terms that start in January 2018.
Both elections are nonpartisan, which means candidates don’t have to register with political parties. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Heath Springs
Heath Springs Town Council has five members – four at-large council seats and the mayor. Terms for two council seats and the mayor expire in January.

Ex-Lancaster City Council member Jackie Harris has filed a rebuttal to council member Linda Blackmon’s motion asking that Harris be forced to pay Blackmon’s legal fees resulting from the challenge to the 2016 election results.
Harris’ attorney, Elizabeth Hyatt, disputed Blackmon’s claim in an Oct. 13 motion that the election protest was “frivolous” and filed solely to keep her from taking office.

KERSHAW – Nancy Watson wants the abandoned Springs Industries Kershaw Plant property on the north side of town cleaned up.
She is tired and frustrated over the 9.1-acre eyesore that paints an unflattering image of the town and its citizens.
“It was a nice clean mill, a nice clean mill village, and we were never afraid to go out at night,” Watson said Tuesday night during a question/answer community meeting held at her beloved Kershaw Second Baptist Church.

Backtracking on Linda Blackmon’s back pay, the Lancaster City Council denied her request for a $6,750 payment from the city Tuesday night, after which she declared she “wasn’t thinking straight” when she cast the deciding vote two weeks earlier to give herself the money.
That Oct. 10 vote appeared to violate state ethics law, which prohibits public officials from voting on matters that “affect their own economic interests.”

Lancaster City Council is reconsidering its Oct. 10 vote on council member Linda Blackmon’s $6,750 in back pay for the nine months when her taking the District 3 seat was delayed by a legal challenge.
This comes after ethics questions were raised because Blackmon did not recuse herself from the vote on the payment. Her yes vote broke a 3-3 tie at the Oct. 10 council meeting.
Mayor Pro Tem Tamara Green Garris requested the motion to reconsider, to be discussed at Tuesday night’s council meeting, which began after press time.

KERSHAW – Kershaw’s attempt to get abandoned Springs Mills property declared a brownfield site is gaining traction.
A community meeting to discuss health hazards stemming from the site is 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Kershaw’s Second Baptist Church.
The town is applying for federal dollars from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the 9.1-acre eyesore, and the public meeting is part of the process.
“We’re trying to get as many people involved as possible,” said Town Administrator Mitch Lucas.

HEATH SPRINGS – Faced with the likelihood of losing the town’s five part-time employees, the Heath Springs Town Council voted Tuesday night to give them an across-the-board 9 percent pay raise.
But hang on: that doesn’t mean the employees will be bringing home more money.
It’s to offset the 9 percent contribution that the part-time workers must start paying into the state retirement system.

VAN WYCK – The priority for Van Wyck’s first town council won’t be the nuts-and-bolts decisions about how to run the town, though those will have to be made.
It will be expediting voluntary annexations and considering involuntarily annexations to block property around the town from getting gobbled up in the Indian Land incorporation battle.
Van Wyck’s single mayoral candidate and nine town council candidates spent most of Thursday’s 90-plus minute public forum talking about annexation.

Absentee voting for the upcoming nonpartisan Heath Springs, Kershaw and Van Wyck town council races is now open.
Qualified voters may cast absentee ballots in person from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays at the county voter registration office on the lower level of the Lancaster County Administration Building, 101 N. Main St.
To request an absentee paper ballot application by phone, call the voting office at (803) 285-2969.
The Heath Springs and Kershaw town council elections are Nov. 7.